What is an EV? What are the obvious things that set an EV apart from the more conventional car that\u2019s powered by an internal combustion engine (ICE)?\u00a0 And what is an EV like to maintain?<\/p>\n
These are just a few of the good questions that might be rattling around in your mind as you consider the possibility of EV ownership.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it, most of us probably jump inside our cars and give little thought to what happens inside a car when we drive off.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start by answering the first question and develop for ourselves an understanding of what an EV is.<\/p>\n
The letters \u2018EV\u2019 stands for the words \u2018electric vehicle\u2019. \u00a0EVs don\u2019t have a combustion engine underneath the bonnet, in fact they don\u2019t have a combustion engine at all.\u00a0 This means that you won\u2019t need to pull over at the gas station to fill your car up with any form of fossil fuel (e.g., unleaded gasoline (91), premium unleaded gasoline (95, 98 or 100 octane) or diesel.\u00a0 Neither will your car be running on gas (LPG or CNG).\u00a0 You won\u2019t even have to top your car up with engine coolant or oil for engine lubrication.\u00a0 Sounds good!<\/p>\n
Once you look away from the various processes of mining earth metals like lithium and cobalt (a by-product of nickel and copper mines); neodymium, terbium, or dysprosium (critical metals used in higher powered batteries that can last for longer distances \u2013 and everyone wants to be able to last longer) used in EV batteries and electronic componentry, EVs look to be more environmentally friendly and interesting cars to own and drive.<\/p>\n
All your power is electronically accessible to your accelerator pedal, and your braking action is processed electronically as well.\u00a0 When you brake or decelerate, battery power can be reverted back into the battery pack.\u00a0 Basically, drain the battery in an EV, and you\u2019ll need to plug it into a charging port again before you can get some power for driving about again.\u00a0 However, that\u2019s nothing new now, is it?<\/p>\n
To get power from your house power supply, you\u2019ll need to have a conversion kit built into your home\u2019s power system in order to be able to power up your EV within a suitable time frame, commonly 6 to 10 hours.\u00a0 More expensive options are available that will enable a quicker charging time.\u00a0 To get power after commuting around the city, you\u2019re going to require a charging station or a park at work that has a convenient and vacant plug-in port for you to charge your vehicle up again to get home.\u00a0 There are some other charging stations (and we\u2019ll need many more of these with more EVs running on the road) where you can park up for a couple of hours to recharge or top-up again for your commute home. \u00a0If you drive your EV out of town and into the country, you\u2019ll need to be sure that you have enough power between charging ports, because, unlike in a vehicle with a combustion engine, a jerry can won\u2019t get you out of trouble nor will the longest power cord.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what serious Outback off-roading enthusiasts will do if they drive an EV.\u00a0 Neither am I sure what mobile \u2018tradies\u2019 will do when they get caught short on power between towns.<\/p>\n
What is missing inside an EV that you have in a common ICE vehicle?<\/p>\n
Noise is the first thing that comes to mind.\u00a0 EVs do without the mechanical noise of the combustion\/explosions that takes place inside a working ICE.\u00a0 What you do get is a very quiet ride with a bit of road noise from the tyres and wind about the bodywork as it slips through the air.\u00a0 Exhaust emissions are also a non-event.<\/p>\n
EVs have no complex clutch or gearing, which means that EVs can accelerate smoothly and quickly, giving you the feeling that you\u2019re driving a sports car.\u00a0 Instant maximum torque is always accessible.<\/p>\n
A purely electric EV has fewer moving parts. \u00a0There are only around about 20 moving parts in an electric motor, compared with nearly 2000 mechanical components in an ICE.\u00a0 The result is that an EV will need less fiddly routine maintenance jobs like changing the engine oil every 10,000km. \u00a0You\u2019ll still need to change the tyres on an EV, and you may go through more tyres because of all that instant torque and acceleration.\u00a0 A pricier tyre made up of a softer compound might also be necessary in order for you to be able to stick to the road better with the EV\u2019s instant and quick acceleration.<\/p>\n
You will also need to replace the battery pack, as they do have a life.\u00a0 This will be the one expensive maintenance bill.\u00a0 Buy a new EV, and you\u2019ll be able to put this off for 10 years or so.\u00a0 Buy a second-hand EV, and who knows how long you\u2019ll have before the battery pack will need replacing or you just won\u2019t be going anywhere.<\/p>\n
An EV owner will likely also need to pay some sort of road user charge or tax in the not-too-distant future, particularly if more EVs take to our roads.<\/p>\n
However, own an EV and you won\u2019t need an ICE tune-up or oil change, and the engine coolant won\u2019t need to be replaced, either.\u00a0 In essence, an EV has no petrol, diesel or oil.\u00a0 It has no exhaust, no clutch or gears. It doesn\u2019t have spark plugs, and it has no throbbing combustion noise that you find you get with a V8, a boxer or even a straight six.<\/p>\n
As with any car, EVs have both their advantages and their disadvantages.\u00a0 At this stage, an affordable EV would be a great and enjoyable car for the city environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is an EV? What are the obvious things that set an EV apart from the more conventional car that\u2019s powered by an internal combustion engine (ICE)?\u00a0 And what is an EV like to maintain? These are just a few of the good questions that might be rattling around in your mind as you consider […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5120,86,7023,4923,4471,59,54,4014,3071],"tags":[7132,7133,7130,7129,7131],"class_list":["post-13730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automotive-design","category-blog","category-car-maintenance","category-electric-vehicles-evs","category-environment","category-fuel-2","category-makes-models","category-sustainabilitygreen","category-technical","tag-ev-advantage","tag-ev-disadvantage","tag-ev-maintenance","tag-ev-evs","tag-living-with-an-ev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13730"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14704,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730\/revisions\/14704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}